Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple told the county Board of Supervisors on August 5 that he has instructed his staff to cancel the sheriff’s office’s contract with Flock Safety, and will not renew it when it expires at the end of September. His stated reason was constitutional: the cameras, he said, can do far more than read license plates.

“I have serious Fourth Amendment concerns with some of the technology that is contained in those cameras, whether we have access to it or not. I swore an oath to the Constitution and will protect your individual liberties until the day I die.”

It is the first Arizona sheriff’s office to walk away from Flock, and it follows Flagstaff, Sedona, South Tucson, and Chandler, which have ended or paused their own agreements. More than 60 Arizona law-enforcement agencies still partner with the company.

What the sheriff actually said

Teeple’s objection was not that plate reading is unlawful. He acknowledged the opposite — that courts have generally found no reasonable expectation of privacy in a plate displayed on a public road. His concern was what the platform is becoming:

  • Capabilities beyond plate capture, which he described as including live video streaming, recorded video, AI-driven pattern recognition, and facial recognition.
  • The aggregation problem. In his words, reported by KTAR and others: “We have a camera system that can do facial recognition technology and can start building a data set on what our citizens are doing on a day-to-day basis. That, in my training and experience, is a huge Fourth Amendment violation.”
  • A specific trigger. He said he grew concerned after learning that Flock cameras in another jurisdiction had tracked a vehicle by its color and front-end damage rather than its plate.

At the same meeting, Supervisor Jeff Serdy raised two further issues: liability over the camera poles, which are not the breakaway type required along many roadways, and the fact that access to the data runs through a private company’s employees rather than elected officials or sworn officers.

Teeple did not dispute that the cameras had been useful. He credited them with helping resolve AMBER and Silver Alerts and with anti-smuggling work, and the sheriff’s office plans to keep still-photograph-only cameras — no video, no recognition software — for smuggling interdiction. He also suggested the Board commission a scientific poll of residents before any decision to bring the technology back.

The disputed part

Flock Safety says its cameras do not use facial recognition, that searches are based on vehicle characteristics rather than identity, and that data is deleted after 30 days unless flagged. That contradicts how Teeple characterized the system, and we are not in a position to resolve the dispute here.

What is worth noting is that the concern raised in Pinal County was partly about capability rather than current configuration — supervisors questioned whether existing cameras could later be replaced with newer models carrying additional features. That is a governance question as much as a technical one: a contract that authorizes a camera network today does not necessarily constrain what that network can do tomorrow.

What this decision is, and what it isn’t

It is not a court ruling. A sheriff declining to renew a contract is a policy choice, not a constitutional holding. No Arizona appellate court has yet decided whether a large, searchable ALPR network violates Article 2, Section 8 of the Arizona Constitution, and this changes none of that. It is a live example of a law-enforcement official reaching a privacy conclusion on his own, without one.

It is narrower than the headlines suggest. The cancellation covers cameras operated by the sheriff’s office in unincorporated Pinal County — reported as roughly 45 — out of an estimated 200 or so countywide. Incorporated cities keep their own contracts, including Casa Grande and Maricopa. Teeple was explicit about the limit: “The cities, if they decide that they want to continue on with this technology, God bless them. They are free to do that.”

It is a reversal. At a 2025 town hall in Maricopa, Teeple defended the same camera network as a vital public-safety tool. Something changed his assessment — by his account, a closer look at what the technology can do.

And it rests on the federal clause, not Arizona’s. Teeple framed his objection under the Fourth Amendment. The argument this project makes runs through Article 2, Section 8 of the Arizona Constitution, which protects “private affairs” in language the Fourth Amendment does not contain. Those are separate arguments that happen to point the same direction. That an Arizona sheriff got there on the federal clause alone is notable — but it is not a substitute for an Arizona court answering the state question.

Sources: FOX 10 Phoenix, KTAR, AZFamily, Pinal Post, and SanTanValley.com, August 5–6, 2026. Camera counts and contract details vary between outlets and are reported here as attributed. Quotations are as published by those outlets. Characterizations of what the cameras can do are the sheriff’s and supervisors’ own; Flock Safety disputes them.